Introduction

Teaching the Way People Learn is a series of six modules that explores current research in the brain sciences as it relates to teacher practice by taking valid conclusions from the lab and applying them to our classrooms.

Throughout the series, you will have the opportunity with your staff to discuss relevant research from the cognitive and neurosciences that inform our teaching in order to help students learn. You will see that a solid literature base exists and that an increasing number of research findings from the sciences could and indeed should guide our teaching practice.

Handout

Inservice Video

“Examining Neuromyths” Video

Optional Extension Resources

Articles / Papers

Neuromyths in Education: Prevalence and Predictors of Misconceptions Among Teachers. Dekker, S., Lee, N.C., Howard-Jones, P., & Jolles, J. (2012). Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 429.

Neuroscience and Education: Myths and Messages. Howard-Jones, P.A. (2014). Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 15 (12), 817.

Stop Propagating the Learning Styles Myths. Kirschner, P.A. (2017). Computers & Education, 106, 166-171.

Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence. Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., & Bjork, R. (2008). Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 9(3), 105-119.

Books

The Brain-Targeted Teaching Model for 21st-Century Schools. Hardiman, M.M. (2012). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Videos

Prof. Paul Howard-Jones discusses the neuromyths surrounding the brain and education.

Prof. Daniel Willingham presenting his research showing that learning styles don’t exist.

https://youtu.be/sIv9rz2NTUk

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Inservice Video

Optional Extension Resources

Articles

Neuroscience and Education: From Research to Practice? Goswami, U. (2006). Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 7(5), 406.

Educational Neuroscience: The Early Years. McCandliss, B.D. (2010). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(18), 8049-8050.

The Art of Changing the Brain. Zull, J.E. (2004). Educational Leadership, 62(1), 68-72.

Books

The Brain-Targeted Teaching Model for 21st-Century Schools. Hardiman, M.M. (2012). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Teaching with the Brain in Mind. Jensen, E. (2005). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Upgrade Your Teaching: Understanding by Design Meets Neuroscience. McTighe, J., & Willis, J. (2019). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

The Best of Corwin: Educational Neuroscience. Sousa, D.A. (Ed.). (2011). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

A Celebration of Neurons: An Educator’s Guide to the Human Brain. Sylwester, R. (1995). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Videos / Websites

To see an animated tour around the brain commissioned by Brain Awareness Week go to:

These BBC Videos will help you understand the extraordinary complexity of the brain.

Test your brain’s reaction time by visiting the Neuroscience & The Classroom website.

Handout

Inservice Video

Optional Extension Resources

Articles

Heschong, L., Mahone, D., Kuttaiah, K., Stone, N., Chappell, C., & McHugh, J. (1999). Daylighting in schools: An investigation into the relationship between daylighting and human performance. Summary for the Pacific Gas and Electric Company on behalf of the California Board for Energy Efficiency Third Party Program.

Hygge, S. (2003). Classroom experiments on the effects of different noise sources and sound levels on long‐term recall and recognition in children. Applied Cognitive Psychology: The Official Journal of the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 17(8), 895-914.  – Available electronically through MLC library

Posner, M. I., & Rothbart, M. K. (2007). Research on attention networks as a model for the integration of psychological science. Annual Review of Psychology, 58, 1-23.

Smith, S. M., Glenberg, A., & Bjork, R. A. (1978). Environmental context and human memory. Memory & Cognition, 6(4), 342-353.

Books

The Brain-Targeted Teaching Model for 21st-Century Schools. Hardiman, M.M. (2012). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Teaching with the Brain in Mind. Jensen, E. (2005). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Our Minds, Our Memories: Enhancing Thinking and Learning At All Ages. Ormrod, J.E. (2011). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Engage the Brain: How to Design for Learning That Taps into the Power of Emotion. Posey, A. (2018). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Videos

Go here to view an interactive site for physically planning your classroom:
https://behavioradvisor.com/ClassroomDesign.html

Dr. John J. Ratey, M.D., an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, has conducted extensive research on the positive connection between movement and brain function. Visit his website for information on this topic:  http://www.johnratey.com

Can a classroom be “too busy”? Go here and find out:
https://youtu.be/fK98v76WiPc

Handout

Inservice Video

Optional Extension Resources

Articles

Amsterlaw, J., Lagattuta, K. H., & Meltzoff, A. N. (2009). Young children’s reasoning about the effects of emotional and physiological states on academic performance. Child Development, 80(1), 115-133.

Bradley, R. H., Corwyn, R. F., McAdoo, H. P., & García Coll, C. (2001). The home environments of children in the United States part I: Variations by age, ethnicity, and poverty status. Child Development, 72(6), 1844-1867.

Dahl, R. E. (2004). Adolescent brain development: a period of vulnerabilities and opportunities. Keynote address. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1021(1), 1-22.

Dweck, Carol S. (2007). “The perils and promises of praise.” Kaleidoscope, Contemporary and Classic Readings in Education, 12: 34-39.

Field, T., Martinez, A., Nawrocki, T., Pickens, J., Fox, N. A., & Schanberg, S. (1998). Music shifts frontal EEG in depressed adolescents. Adolescence, 33(129), 109-117.

Fredrickson, B. L. (1998). What good are positive emotions? Review of General Psychology, 2(3), 300-319.

Fredrickson, B. L., & Branigan, C. (2005). Positive emotions broaden the scope of attention and thought‐action repertoires. Cognition & Emotion, 19(3), 313-332.

Giedd, J. N. (2009). Linking adolescent sleep, brain maturation, and behavior. The Journal of Adolescent Health: Official Publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine, 45(4), 319.

Hart, W., & Albarracín, D. (2009). The effects of chronic achievement motivation and achievement primes on the activation of achievement and fun goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97(6), 1129.

Izard, C., Fine, S., Schultz, D., Mostow, A., Ackerman, B., & Youngstrom, E. (2001). Emotion knowledge as a predictor of social behavior and academic competence in children at risk. Psychological Science, 12(1), 18-23.

Joëls, M., Pu, Z., Wiegert, O., Oitzl, M. S., & Krugers, H. J. (2006). Learning under stress: How does it work?. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10(4), 152-158.

Masten, A. S. (1986). Humor and competence in school-aged children. Child Development, 461-473.

Mueller, C. M., & Dweck, C. S. (1998). Praise for intelligence can undermine children’s motivation and performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(1), 33.

Nachmias, M., Gunnar, M., Mangelsdorf, S., Parritz, R. H., & Buss, K. (1996). Behavioral inhibition and stress reactivity: The moderating role of attachment security. Child Development, 67(2), 508-522.

Payton, J., Weissberg, R. P., Durlak, J. A., Dymnicki, A. B., Taylor, R. D., Schellinger, K. B., & Pachan, M. (2008). The positive impact of social and emotional learning for kindergarten to eighth-grade students: Findings from three scientific reviews. Technical Report. Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning.

Pekrun, R., Goetz, T., Titz, W., & Perry, R. P. (2002). Academic emotions in students’ self-regulated learning and achievement: A program of qualitative and quantitative research. Educational Psychologist, 37(2), 91-105.

Rao, H., Betancourt, L., Giannetta, J. M., Brodsky, N. L., Korczykowski, M., Avants, B. B., … & Farah, M. J. (2010). Early parental care is important for hippocampal maturation: Evidence from brain morphology in humans. Neuroimage, 49(1), 1144-1150.

Resnick, M. D., Bearman, P. S., Blum, R. W., Bauman, K. E., Harris, K. M., Jones, J., … & Ireland, M. (1997). Protecting adolescents from harm: Findings from the National Longitudinal Study on Adolescent Health. JAMA, 278(10), 823-832.

Rice, J. A., Levine, L. J., & Pizarro, D. A. (2007). ” Just stop thinking about it”: Effects of emotional disengagement on children’s memory for educational material. Emotion, 7(4), 812.

Ruttle, P. L., Shirtcliff, E. A., Serbin, L. A., Fisher, D. B. D., Stack, D. M., & Schwartzman, A. E. (2011). Disentangling psychobiological mechanisms underlying internalizing and externalizing behaviors in youth: Longitudinal and concurrent associations with cortisol. Hormones and Behavior, 59(1), 123-132.

Steinberg, L. (2008). A social neuroscience perspective on adolescent risk-taking. Developmental Review, 28(1), 78-106.

Stevens, C., Lauinger, B., & Neville, H. (2009). Differences in the neural mechanisms of selective attention in children from different socioeconomic backgrounds: an event‐related brain potential study. Developmental Science, 12(4), 634-646.

Strick, M., Holland, R. W., Van Baaren, R. B., & Van Knippenberg, A. D. (2009). Finding comfort in a joke: Consolatory effects of humor through cognitive distraction. Emotion, 9(4), 574.

Books

Deasy, R. J. (2002). Critical links: Learning in the arts and student academic and social development. Washington, DC: Arts Education Partnership.

Feinstein, S. (Ed.). (2014). From the brain to the classroom: The encyclopedia of learning. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.

Hardiman, M. M. (2012). The brain-targeted teaching model for 21st-century schools. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Jensen, E. (2005). Teaching with the brain in mind. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Posey, A. (2018). Engage the brain: How to design for learning that taps into the power of emotion. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Shonkoff, J. P., & Phillips, D. A. (2000). From neurons to neighborhoods: The science of early childhood development. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Zins, J. E. (Ed.). (2004). Building academic success on social and emotional learning: What does the research say? Teachers College Press.

Videos / Websites

Take this quiz (https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/quizzes/ei_quiz) to find out how well you“read” people and what your “EQ” is.

To learn why it might be a good idea to improve learning in your classroom by incorporating laughter into your teaching go to: http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/life/inside‐the‐mind/emotions/laughter.htm

Visit this website to hear Neuroscientist Richard Davidson presents his research about the connection between emotions and learning: https://www.edutopia.org/video/heart-brain-connection-neuroscience-social-emotional-and-academic-learning

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Handout

Inservice Video

Optional Extension Resources

Articles

Auble, P. M., & Franks, J. J. (1978). The effects of effort toward comprehension on recall. Memory & Cognition, 6(1), 20-25.

Bartlett, F. C. (1932). Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Catterall, J. S. (2002). The arts and the transfer of learning. In R. Deasy (Ed.), Critical links: Learning in the arts and student academic and social development. Washington, DC: Arts Education Partnership.

Chase, W G., & Ericsson, K. A. (1981). Skilled memory. In J. R. Anderson (Ed.), Cognitive skills and their acquisition (pp. 141-189). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Chase, W. G., & Simon, H. A. (1973). Perception in chess. Cognitive Psychology, 4(1), 55-81.

Deasy, R. J. (Ed.), Critical links: Learning in the arts and student academic and social development. Washington, DC: Arts Education Partnership.

Defeyter, M. A., Russo, R., & McPartlin, P. L. (2009). The picture superiority effect in recognition memory: A developmental study using the response signal procedure. Cognitive Development, 24(3), 265-273.

Diemand-Yauman, C., Oppenheimer, D. M., & Vaughan, E. B. (2011). Fortune favors the bold and the italicized: Effects of disfluency on educational outcomes. Cognition, 118(1), 111-115.

Engelkamp, J., Zimmer, H. D., Mohr, G., & Sellen, O. (1994). Memory of self-performed tasks: Self-performing during recognition. Memory & Cognition, 22(1), 34-39.

Fredrickson, B. L., & Branigan, C. (2005). Positive emotions broaden the scope of attention and thought‐action repertoires. Cognition & Emotion, 19(3), 313-332.

Kane, J. H., & Anderson, R. C. (1978). Depth of processing and interference effects in the learning and remembering of sentences. Journal of Educational Psychology, 70(4), 626.

Kelly, S. W., Burton, A. M., Kato, T., & Akamatsu, S. (2001). Incidental learning of real-world regularities. Psychological Science, 12(1), 86-89.

Kornell, N., & Bjork, R. A. (2008). Learning concepts and categories: Is spacing the “enemy of induction”?. Psychological Science, 19(6), 585-592.

MacLeod, C. M., Gopie, N., Hourihan, K. L., Neary, K. R., & Ozubko, J. D. (2010). The production effect: Delineation of a phenomenon. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 36(3), 671.

McBride, D. M., & Dosher, B. A. (2002). A comparison of conscious and automatic memory processes for picture and word stimuli: A process dissociation analysis. Consciousness and Cognition, 11(3), 423-460.

McDaniel, M. A., & Bugg, J. M. (2008). Instability in memory phenomena: A common puzzle and a unifying explanation. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 15(2), 237-255.

Newcombe, N., & Fox, N. A. (1994). Infantile amnesia: Through a glass darkly. Child Development, 65(1), 31-40.

Ozubko, J. D., & MacLeod, C. M. (2010). The production effect in memory: Evidence that distinctiveness underlies the benefit. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 36(6), 1543.

Posner, M. I., & Patoine, B. (2009). How arts training improves attention and cognition. Cerebrum, 2009, 2-4.

Rohrer, D., & Pashler, H. (2010). Recent research on human learning challenges conventional instructional strategies. Educational Researcher, 39(5), 406-412.

Rohrer, D., & Taylor, K. (2007). The shuffling of mathematics problems improves learning. Instructional Science, 35(6), 481-498.

Scruggs, T. E., & Mastropieri, M. A. (2000). The effectiveness of mnemonic instruction for students with learning and behavior problems: An update and research synthesis. Journal of Behavioral Education, 10(2-3), 163-173.

Slamecka, N. J., & Graf, P. (1978). The generation effect: Delineation of a phenomenon. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 4(6), 592.

Smithrim, K., & Upitis, R. (2005). Learning through the arts: Lessons of engagement. Canadian Journal of Education, 109-127.

Talmi, D., Anderson, A. K., Riggs, L., Caplan, J. B., & Moscovitch, M. (2008). Immediate memory consequences of the effect of emotion on attention to pictures. Learning & Memory, 15(3), 172-182.

Zaromb, F. M., & Roediger, H. L. (2009). The effects of “effort after meaning” on recall: Differences in within-and between-subjects designs. Memory & Cognition, 37(4), 447-463.

Books

Hardiman, M. M. (2012). The brain-targeted teaching model for 21st-century schools. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Jensen, E. (2005). Teaching with the brain in mind. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Posey, A. (2018). Engage the brain: How to design for learning that taps into the power of emotion. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Whitman, G., & Kelleher, I. (2016). Neuroteach: Brain science and the future of education. Rowman & Littlefield.

Videos / Websites

“LDonline” presents some great information on memory strategies for teachers “Making It Stick: Memorable Strategies to Enhance Learning” http://www.ldonline.org/article/5602/

To read about a neurologist (and teacher!) making the case for the Video Game Model as a learning tool ANd explaining the relationship between elaboration, review, memory, and learning go to: https://www.edutopia.org/blog/neurologist-makes-case-video-game-model-learning-tool

To view teachers demonstrating strategies that enhance student long term memory, go here:

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Inservice Video

Optional Extension Resources

Articles

Bowden, E. M., & Jung-Beeman, M. (2007). Methods for investigating the neural components of insight. Methods, 42(1), 87-99.

Brophy, D. R. (2006). A comparison of individual and group efforts to creatively solve contrasting types of problems. Creativity Research Journal, 18(3), 293-315.

Chávez-Eakle, R. A., Graff-Guerrero, A., García-Reyna, J. C., Vaugier, V., & Cruz-Fuentes, C. (2007). Cerebral blood flow associated with creative performance: A comparative study. Neuroimage, 38(3), 519-528.

Fink, A., Benedek, M., Grabner, R. H., Staudt, B., & Neubauer, A. C. (2007). Creativity meets neuroscience: Experimental tasks for the neuroscientific study of creative thinking. Methods, 42(1), 68-76.

Fu, M., & Zuo, Y. (2011). Experience-dependent structural plasticity in the cortex. Trends in Neurosciences, 34(4), 177-187.

Hyde, K. L., Lerch, J., Norton, A., Forgeard, M., Winner, E., Evans, A. C., & Schlaug, G. (2009). Musical training shapes structural brain development. Journal of Neuroscience, 29(10), 3019-3025.

Karmarkar, U. R., & Dan, Y. (2006). Experience-dependent plasticity in adult visual cortex. Neuron, 52(4), 577-585.

Limb, C. J., & Braun, A. R. (2008). Neural substrates of spontaneous musical performance: An fMRI study of jazz improvisation. PLoS One, 3(2), e1679.

Maguire, E. A., Gadian, D. G., Johnsrude, I. S., Good, C. D., Ashburner, J., Frackowiak, R. S., & Frith, C. D. (2000). Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 97(8), 4398-4403.

Rotherham, A. J., & Willingham, D. (2009). 21st century. Educational Leadership, 67(1), 16-21.

Sawyer, R. K. (2006). Educating for innovation. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 1(1), 41-48.

Schlaug, G., Jancke, L., Huang, Y., & Steinmetz, H. (1995). In vivo evidence of structural brain asymmetry in musicians. Science, 267(5198), 699-701.

Books

Hardiman, M. M. (2012). The brain-targeted teaching model for 21st-century schools. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Perkins, D. N. (2001). The eureka effect: The art and logic of breakthrough thinking. WW Norton & Company.

Willingham, D. T. (2009). Why don’t students like school?: A cognitive scientist answers questions about how the mind works and what it means for the classroom. John Wiley & Sons.

Zhao, Y. (2012). World class learners: Educating creative and entrepreneurial students. Corwin Press.

Videos / Websites

Here is Sir Ken Robinson in an RSA Animate video speaking about “Changing Education Paradigms”

To view a video describing the big hippocampi of London taxi drivers go here:

https://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/00000144-0a26-d3cb-a96c-7b2fd17f0000

“MindShift explores the future of learning in all its dimensions – covering cultural and technology trends, groundbreaking research, and innovations in education.” Follow Mind/Shift on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MindShift.KQED/info

Here is a blog post (Teaching for Creativity: Two Dozen Tips) from Robert Sternberg who has written extensively about creativity.